.45-Caliber Deathtrap Read Online Free PDF Page A

might I find this Cannady?” Cuno asked.
    â€œOh,” Stringy Hair said, “you don’t wanna find Cannady. He’s off his feed. He done had to leave his injured brother with the whores. Besides, he’s faster’n downwind spit, an’ mean as a rattlesnake in a fryin’ pan.”
    Stovepipe’s eyes flicked toward the wounded man behind the wagon. Cuno swung left. His Colt barked at the same time the S&W of the knee-shot man burned a round through Cuno’s left calf. Cuno’s slug smashed the wounded man’s head straight back in the street, its quarter-sized hole leaking blood.
    In the corner of his right eye, Cuno saw the other two hard cases reach for their guns. He dove forward as the pistols popped, drilling the air where he’d been standing, the slugs plunking into the saloon and the awning posts behind him.
    He hit the dirt behind the wagon and scrambled to a crouch as two more shots plunked into the wagon box, spraying his face with wood slivers. He snaked his Colt around the wagon’s right rear corner. The two hard cases were sidestepping toward the saloon but facing the wagon, crouched, pistols extended, trying to get a bead on their quarry.
    Cuno triggered one shot, then another, watched as both men fired their own revolvers into the dirt and went down, screaming. Raging, bleeding from his lower left shoulder, Stovepipe swung his revolver toward the wagon and sparked a round off a small iron tie ring right of Cuno’s face.
    Gritting his teeth, Cuno drilled two rounds into the man’s chest.
    As Stovepipe wailed, kicking around in the dust like an overheated horse, Stringy Hair ran heavy-footed, right hand held tight to his wounded hip, around the far side of the saloon. Cuno stood and opened his Colt’s loading gate. As he shook out the spent shells and replaced them with fresh ones, the saloon’s single door squawked.
    Serenity Parker stepped out, looking around warily.
    â€œStay inside, Serenity.” Cuno flipped the loading gate closed. “Got a little moppin’ up to do.”
    Parker made a hasty retreat, the door swinging shut behind him.
    As Cuno moved to the saloon’s corner, following Stringy Hair’s scuffling tracks, he saw that several scantily clad women had moved out of the whorehouse and into the street, looking around wide-eyed. Several others remained on the unpainted house’s sagging front porch.
    â€œLara, get back here!” one called to a girl moving toward the wagon. “You wanna get shot ?”
    Cuno waved the women back and tramped along the saloon’s west wall, following blood splashed in the gravel and rabbitbrush around the saloon’s rear corner to the backyard.
    Ca-pop! Zing!
    As the slug sliced off a rock near Cuno’s left boot, the shooter ran out from behind an old beer barrel, heading for the barn. Crouching, Cuno fired two quick shots. The man screamed and fell inside the barn, scrambled back behind the door.
    His Colt appeared around the door, just below the hide-loop handle. It barked twice, the barrel belching smoke and stabbing flames.
    The man pulled the gun back.
    Cuno aimed his .45 at the door and emptied it, the four slugs tracing a circle the size of a coffee lid.
    There was a wooden thud. The door jerked. Stringy Hair’s head appeared, sagging slowly down to the hay-flecked ground beside the door. The open eyes did not blink. Blood washed over his lips and down his chin, dribbled into the dust.
    The saloon’s back door scraped open. In the crack, the old bartender’s face appeared, owl-eyed. When soft footfalls sounded behind Cuno, he spun, extending his empty gun. A girl. She flinched, took one step back.
    â€œThere’s another one in the house,” she said.
    It was Lara, with soft yellow hair and sandstone-colored eyes, a mole on her right cheekbone, another just above her nose. The blemishes did nothing to mar her beauty. Cuno had wondered what